


If I Can't Keep It, At Least Let Me Call It By Name

by abreathaway (silverraindrop)



Category: The Durrells (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pain, Post-circus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverraindrop/pseuds/abreathaway
Summary: She doesn't really know what's happened in the last few weeks. She definitely isn't sure what's happening right now, as Spiros tells her of his youngest children, how wonderful it is to see them, as if anything could be wonderful at this moment. As if the world isn't crashing down around them. With the sea giving the sound effects to prove it.
Relationships: Louisa Durrell/Spiros Halikiopoulos
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	If I Can't Keep It, At Least Let Me Call It By Name

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Changer' by Anais Mitchell, which is such a great Louisa/Spiros song.

She doesn't really know what's happened in the last few weeks. She definitely isn't sure what's happening right now, as Spiros tells her of his youngest children, how wonderful it is to see them, as if anything could be wonderful at this moment. As if the world isn't crashing down around them. With the sea giving the sound effects to prove it. She tries not to sound desperate as she asks him to say her name. But there is no way she could possibly achieve that with her voice cracking and scratching in her throat, being drowned at the last minute by the tears she cannot stop. Isn't the request desperate enough?

Apparently not, because more tears seem to be required when he fulfils it. And choking sobs to finish off the look of a grown woman who cannot control herself. 

Telling herself she doesn't know what happened in the last weeks is a lie. She knows what happened. But she cannot bring herself to ask herself how she allowed it to. How she allowed herself to fall for a married man, a family friend her children have grown used to having around, and who have seen everything that has happened in the last few weeks. And how did she let  _ that _ happen? 

But happen it did, and with Larry's arms comforting her, she can't bring herself to feel bad for it. Larry is hurting too, she is aware, maybe he needs a hug just as much as she. He feels things acutely, even this short-term girlfriend, who he was not particularly attached to, is hurting his heart right now. But a man like Larry bounces back quickly, and he will be mostly recovered by next week. Louisa won't, it's impossible really to imagine that she could. 

She cannot keep this thing she had with Spiros, she must sequester it away in the shadows of herself from now on, it cannot live on anywhere outside if her, not in expression or conversation. But she can call it what it is in the privacy of her own mind. She let herself fall, that's what happened in the last weeks, that's what it's called, falling in love. Really in love, without the barriers of impossibility that had stopped her for years. 

And this, this is pain. Pain that really should not be mentioned. It's not at all acceptable for her to be in pain over this. But she is, and Larry is possibly the only person she can really admit that to. She is a woman familiar with pain, she has felt a great deal of it in all her years. And she has felt this pain before. The pain of part of herself being ripped from her chest, the pain of her stomach filling with emptiness. When Lawrence died there was little else to do about the pain. None of the children were old enough to stop her from drinking, and none of her adult family loved her enough to stop her either. So she retreated to dreary old England with little else to fill her but a bottle of gin.

The children won't let her do that now, and truthfully, she won't let herself. That would really be desperate. Thankfully, Larry has already provided her with an alternative distraction. 

Providing for guests is only marginally different from raising children. She hopes she doesn't mess this up quite so badly. As much as she would love to pretend that her children are not horribly affected by her reaction to her husband's death, she knows it's a lie. She does that alot. Lies to herself. Just like she did when she told herself that breaking up with Hugh had nothing to do with Spiros. Just a family friend. Happily married. As if she didn't know how they felt even back then. As if speaking lies into the universe makes them true.

But it doesn't. And the shelves remain unfinished because that was a lie too. She is not hopeless when it comes to home repairs, she could finish some shelving if she put her mind to it. But she can't. She tries, and every time she does she feels sick to her stomach and it's back to laundry or cooking, and things she could do through any kind of pain. When she gets builders in she doesn't even ask them to finish the shelves. She isn't going to use them anyway.


End file.
